Actress Adrienne Barbeau Talks Maude, Cannonball Run and Midlife

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Best known for her iconic performances in Grease and Maude, actress and author Adrienne Barbeau has had major success entertaining audiences on screen and on stage for decades. In today’s episode, we sat down with Adrienne to discuss the start of her career, how she transitioned from stage acting to screen acting, portraying feminist topics on Maude, and her experience having twin boys in her fifties while working full-time.

First, we asked Adrienne how she first got started in the industry. She told us that initially, she began acting in junior high. She performed in community theater, and after her first professional job moved to New York to pursue a career. By age 25, Adrienne was performing in Fiddler on the Roof on Broadway. Growing up, Adrienne was not very interested in film or television, so she always wanted to perform on stage. However, after booking her first television role on a series called Maude, she shifted into screen acting. Adrienne explained how initially, it was a big transition. While Maude rehearsed like an onstage play, it still took her time to adjust from performing in front of live audiences on stage to working in front of a camera.

While working on Maude, Adrienne tackled many topics and storylines that were considered radical at the time. When asked what portraying those stories taught her, Adrienne told us that it gave her a new perspective on her own life. During her childhood, Adrienne did not grow up in a political household. It was not until she started playing carol and was made to be a feminist spokesperson by the media that she began analyzing her own life. She began to see not only the power her mother had as an independent woman but also the power of fellow women. In two episodes of Maude, the plot centered around abortion. At the time, the network refused to film the second episode until the first aired. Had it gotten bad ratings, they would not have gone ahead and would have scraped the story entirely. However, it ended up being filmed, and Adrienne realized how the story reflected the lives of real women experiencing those issues. Unfortunately, women’s issues in Hollywood also involve instances of harassment. During her time in the industry, Adrienne has been lucky enough to have not had any “casting couch” experiences. However, she did share with us a time when she was asked to enter someone’s home to try on a costume and felt unsafe.

Along with Maude, Adrienne has also worked on a number of horror films. We asked how she feels about the horror genre, and Adrienne said that despite doing many horror movies, she has never been the biggest fan of horror. In fact, it wasn’t until she was offered the script for the film The Fog that she started delving into horror more. Among her many horror movies is a project called Cannonball Run, and when discussing it, Adrienne told us that she did not enjoy the filming process. While she was there to work, she felt the other actors were only there to have fun and did not take the movie as seriously as they should have. Tragedies also occurred on the set that made the filming experience less positive. We also discussed how Adrienne became a mother to twin boys in her fifties. She explained that becoming a mother in midlife was a great experience for her, but she does regret working when her sons were still young. When they were five months old, she booked a project that involved her alternating between working and taking care of crying infants, which was difficult for her to manage.

In 1984, when her sons were little, Adrienne began doing voiceover work so she could spend more time at home. Now, she continues to do it and enjoys it. She spoke to us about some of the iconic roles she’s voiced, including Catwoman in the 90s and numerous video games such as Fallout 76, God of War, and Halo IV. Having worked in voice acting, stage acting and screen acting, we asked Adrienne what her hopes were for the future of her career. She said that she’d love to do a recurring role on a series she loves or work on another feature film. She also just finished coediting a book about Grease that will be coming out next year.

Finally, we spoke to Adrienne about her opinion on the future of midlife women in entertainment. She discussed how with the emergence of streaming platforms, there are more opportunities for midlife actors available. Adrienne hopes the trend continues and that we see more midlife women working in the film and television industry.

Adrienne Barbeau

Adrienne began her career in 1963 with the San Jose Civic Light Opera. After graduating high school, she traveled with a musical comedy revue, entertaining our servicemen on Army bases throughout Southeast Asia. In 1965, she moved to New York where she made her Broadway debut as Tevye’s second daughter, Hodel, in Fiddler on the Roof. A Tony nomination and a Theatre World Award for her creation of Rizzo in the original Broadway production of Grease led her back to California and the role of Bea Arthur’s daughter, Carol, in the hit series Maude.

Since then, she has become a best-selling author, a recording artist, and the star of numerous features, films for television, concert performances, musicals, and plays.

Movie fans know her best for her performances in The Fog, Escape From New York, Creepshow, Swamp Thing, Back to School, and Cannonball Run. She appeared in the Academy Award winning ARGO. Recently released are the golf comedy The Eagle and the Albatross with Dan Lauria and K-Pop star Amber Liu, and the ecological horror film Unearth, starring Marc Blucas.

Adrienne has a Golden Globe nomination and over 450 screen performances to her credit. She starred as Ruthie, the Snake Dancer, on HBO’s fascinating series, Carnivale. She was Oswald’s mom on Drew Carey, Victoria Grayson’s mom on Revenge, and Venus’s mom on Sons of Anarchy. Daytime viewers know her as Suzanne Stanwyck on General Hospital. Her recent television appearances include Criminal Minds, Grey’s Anatomy, the Netflix series A.J. and the Queen, starring RuPaul, and American Horror Story.

Having starred in over 25 theatrical productions in the U.S. and Canada, Adrienne spent most of 2015 playing Berthe, Pippin’s grandmother, in the National Tour of Pippin, singing “No Time At All” as she hung upside down from a trapeze.

Off camera, Adrienne is the voice of Catwoman in Batman, The Animated Series, Ms. Simone in Scooby-Do on Zombie Island, and Scooter’s Mom in the 3-D animated film Fly Me To The Moon. She can be heard in a myriad of video games: God of War, Halo 4, and Fallout 76 among them. She also provides video description for the visually impaired on many films, documentaries, and television series; it’s one of her favorite forms of voiceover work.

Adrienne is the author of four books: the best-selling memoir There Are Worse Things I Could Do; the urban fantasy Vampyres of Hollywood and its comedy romance sequels, Love Bites and Make Me Dead.

Adrienne is currently at work co-writing Grease Tell Me More, Tell Me More! for release next summer to honor the 50th anniversary of the Broadway musical. Published by Chicago Review Press, proceeds from the book will go to The Actors’ Fund.